fear (fɪə) ![]() | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a feeling of distress, apprehension, or alarm caused by impending danger, pain, etc |
| 2. | a cause of this feeling |
| 3. | awe; reverence: fear of God |
| 4. | concern; anxiety |
| 5. | possibility; chance: there is no fear of that happening |
| 6. | for fear of, for fear that, for fear lest to forestall or avoid |
| 7. | no fear certainly not |
| 8. | put the fear of God into to frighten |
| —vb (foll by for) | |
| 9. | to be afraid (to do something) or of (a person or thing); dread |
| 10. | (tr) to revere; respect |
| 11. | (tr; takes a clause as object) to be sorry: used to lessen the effect of an unpleasant statement: I fear that you have not won |
| 12. | to feel anxiety about something |
| 13. | an archaic word for frighten |
| [Old English fǣr; related to Old High German fāra, Old Norse fār hostility, Latin perīculum danger] | |
| 'fearer | |
| —n | |
| 'fearless | |
| —adj | |
| 'fearlessly | |
| —adv | |
| 'fearlessness | |
| —n | |
| a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |